I wrote this poem this morning, after thinking most of the day about the notion that when we seek to understand our identity, we risk losing the gestalt of our Self…reducing ourselves inadvertently as we seek to understand ourselves.  This fracturing may perhaps be necessary as a beginning, even as when we want to create an amazing dish we must first understand the components and how they go together and interact.  But ultimately, each facet, each ingredient must willingly give up the ghost of its independence, and join the unity to become married into the dish.  Otherwise, the dish fails.

We define ourselves by gender, by sexuality, by occupation, by spiritual allegiance or lack thereof, by ideal, philosophies or concept.

What if all of those things were like the stones and glass shards of a kaleidoscope?  What if they all could marry, come together, and we might actually be something far more wonderful and complex…and simple?  And what if the kaleidoscope of me was a mere shard going with the kaleidoscope of you…and you…and you…until we were a blazing mandala of God extending thoughout His universe in His hand and we would ride on Her song and shine for Their Glory forever?

This poem is about that…the idea is a deep one, and needs to be unpacked inside you for days, perhaps months or years…I know that I am understanding ingredients easily, but only just realising that they must now conjoin, and consummate this marriage of me.Bright colored stones and lacy graceful glass,
Refract the Light and bend it beautiful…
(our world is bent so Grace responded with
refracted Beauty), hand to grasp, hold hope
and twist that tube, Tender Kaliedoscope.
And wakeful bright and peering eager eyes
convert sensed input into wondrous meaning,
Glad riot glorious, such brilliant beauty
a visual symphonic concert singing.The sullen bully was afraid to look,
afraid to feel, so afraid to become
a subject. His hand ragged, rudely rough,
and she, her slattern eyes sloppy with fear…

Their mouths shot stones and cannonaded curses,
cascades of clouting shouting wounding words
until I broke, until I shattered final
and glad glass, patterned fragments intricate
of my me placed just so to catch the light
and burst with grace that glowed and shone brilliant
to beauty forth with glory-shine and SHINE…

Now broken, fallen shattered, they were able
to clench at last, to fumble furiously
To grasp and rape and ravage with their fingers
and hot insinuating tones of terror…
they grab a bloody shard and cut themselves
and cut each other “proving” I was poison
reducing me to that fragmented shard
and say they named me, no more numinous.But I rebel, reject their brutal label,
and gather up the pieces of my beauty
and bring them, mourning to my tender Lady
and lay them down there, shattered and so dull
and praying, hoping, believing and knowing
She is my Mama, Warrior-Sister too
and She will integrate me intimately,
so that I coalesce to shine again
and turn in faith and love and shine in Hope
that I’m no more Broken Kaleidoscope